Yo ho, heave ho: International Please Don't Pirate My Book Day.

I wouldn't pirate even if I could, because that would be... wrong

Seriously, my parents were far from perfect, but they did teach me to respect writers and their creations, not to mention other people's property. Also, I was taken to used bookshops, rummage sales and other sources of used books from the time I was very small, so it's just the way to get books.

I buy books new when I can afford it, I buy books used when I find them. If I don't want to keep them, I donate them to a Friends of the Library for someone else to buy. One of the nicest things I've ever experienced was discovering that the hardback copies of books I'd replaced with paperbacks and donated - had been put into circulation at the library.

As a writer, and the wife of a writer (and the mother of a writer's kids, and the feeder of a writer's dogs, lol), I take piracy very personally.

So much so that I actually got into a (my first and only - but as Curly said, the day ain't over yet) Twitter war over same with a guy who openly admitted to piracy ... Grrrr ... </p>

Said he, piracy is okay because if I liked the book I post a review and maybe buy a copy later. The rest is crap that doesn't deserve my hard earned cash.

Said I (after a few deep breaths and a trip to the backyard to wail my rage to the heavens) I dare you, try that at a Denny's (I think there was profanity right about there in the stream), order a meal and then only pay if you like it ...

Really, I have no tolerance, starving student or broke, sleep deprived 30-something, for stealing. This ain't Les Miz and they aren't starving on a street. Having in fact been in both those shoes myself at one time or another, I could always save $10 over a couple of weeks (often less if Kindle) and look forward to the well earned treat soon ...

Too, besides the moral wrongness of stealing, I would think the knowledge of having cheated a writer who may barely be able to afford her own cafe mocha/friend's latest novel/whatever out of the $10 she rightfully earned, would dilute the enjoyment of the pirated item, thus making it a bummer for all.

Pfeh. And HOW often does he go out and buy a copy of the books that he pirated?

If it's >90%, or at least >90% of the books he read through to the end ... okay. But I'd bet (small amounts of) hard cash it's not.

When I got really interested in the Harry Potter series, I was unemployed, and prior to that, I had been very underemployed. my company had just gone out of business, and I was pretty depressed, because the big return-to-making-big-bucks jobs I'd been going for were either turning me down or taking a very long time to come to fruition. Reading those books and getting immersed in the story kept me away from the edge, and I'm quite embarrassed to say that I pirated all 5 of the (then) HP books online. Downloaded PDFs on bittorrent, because frankly, I was buying frozen chicken nuggets at Sam's Club (on my parents' membership) and using them to bulk up chicken ramen for dinner.

Fast forward a few months, the big job finally comes together, we move back to California. The first thing I did with my second paycheck (the first one paid back lots of the moving expenses) was go buy every one of those books. Hardbacks, even, when paperbacks were readily available - partly because I loved them so much, but mostly because I felt -really- bad about pirating them, and wanted to make amends. And I kept buying her books in hardback, even when cheaper options existed. It's part of my penance.

By the same token, when I got interested in your Newsflesh series, I asked K what medium she thought would get you the most money, because I want to make sure you're enabled to keep writing kickass books. (by the way, which one puts more food in the kitty bowl, physical books or digital books? :)

And of course, I haven't even gotten into the Toby books, maybe I'll go buy a bunch of hardbacks...

When I was very young, my family was below the poverty line. That changed later on, but the first 11 years of my life made a huge impression on me. I remember that my parents
very rarely spent money on anything we didn't need, but that they were always willing to buy books. They bought books for me, for themselves for my sister, and if it was a friend or
family member's birthday, they would probably be getting a book. Authors were revered almost as much as God (and my mom grew up Catholic, so...that's a lot of reverence!)

Spending the first years of my life in poverty, and now living back below the poverty line in the first years of my adulthood, also left me loving to own stuff. I get really, really excited
when there's something I want and I can afford to buy it. It means I did something right. And I still love books. I love pouncing on new ones
the minute they hit shelves in the bookstore, and impulse-buying my favorites from when I was a kid. I download music all the freaking time (but since I'm the kind of person who likes to
own hard copies of things, and hey, I respect rock stars, I usually end up buying the albums too) but the idea of downloading books for free just never appealed to me. Books are sacred.

"Books are a luxury item. When I was a kid below the poverty line, if I'd had access to book torrent sites and an e-reader, I can guarantee you that I'd have been one of the biggest pirates around, making me the biggest hypocrit around."

If one feels one would have done something wrong in particular circumstances, does that carry the same moral failure as actually having done that wrong thing? Interesting question.

I have a number of faults (as do we all). As far as I was previously concerned, Pirating eBooks was not one of them. The only eBooks I've ever downloaded were legal downloads. But suppose it had NOT been legal to download a particular book (nor had any other way been open to acquire it legally) - would I have downloaded it anyway?

In one case my answer would be "Yes." I was doing eldercare for my mother during her last years. The book in question was one she had enjoyed very much when she had read it as a child. She wanted to read it one more time. Had an illegal download been my only option to acquire it, I would have done so. So if "I would have" counts, I guess you might as well call me a pirate too.

But if feel that circumstance can alter things, if you allow the "starving student" more slack than the "yuppie with expensive coffee", you might extend that to allow "totally-broke younger Seanan in this thought experiment" a generous amount of slack as well. Perhaps "Easily-Forgiven Hypothetical Pirates" would be the term. Can we form a club?

I had this discussion back in the early 00's - when I was just becoming aware of what piracy could offer - with a friend of mine who is a writer, and ever since then I have done my best to put my money where my fandom is. I am in the fortunate position of being able to afford books, movies, music and games, so I buy them.

On a side note, and I don't expect you to answer if you want to as it is offtopic and intrusive, I have always wondered how you maintain paid writing, hobby writing and a job. I think I'd be a small ball of exhaustion after 2 days. Is your day job in writing in some way, and do you see a point where you could give it up and live off writing (assuming you wanted to)?

I have a personal policy of putting my money where my eyes and/or ears are.

At least, now that I have steady employment I do.

I have this fear (honest, and not entirely irrational) that if I don't pay money to support the art that I really want then one day I will turn around and there will be no art that I really want.

I have this fear (honest, and not entirely irrational) that if I don't pay money to support the art that I really want then one day I will turn around and there will be no art that I really want.

Exactly.

So I preordered Midnight blue on book depositry. It cost me $6.50. My first thought then was, how on earth can Seanan make any money off this. This post has me even more worried.

I'm so glad you don't think you're above admitting a love for money. I love money, too. It makes it possible to order all sorts of geeky things off the internet. :D

As for the rally against piracy, preach it! The only pirates we need are Jack Sparrow and Will Turner cosplayers. ;)

Thank you for posting this. It never occurred to me to pirate books, even as a broke college student who would occasionally pirate music and software. Even then, I always bought my books, even if they were more often used than new. Now, I've grown into the realization of what piracy does to the creators I like, and have disposable income, so I don't do it. Also, nearly all the music we listen to now is by filkers or faire folk, and even as a student I'd buy the music if I knew the money was largely going to the artist. The rationalizations I used to justify it didn't hold up under that circumstance. Realizing that artists I like wouldn't be able to make new work if they didn't get paid was probably the biggest thing that pushed me to stop pirating. That and actually having the money to spend.

These days, books have their own expense line in our family budget, and is the one line we regularly go over budget on. You're the single largest contributor to that - besides being the most prolific author we read, we buy your books in multiple formats more often than any other author. Sarah and I love the portability of ebooks, but they don't autograph or lend well. Both of those are important with your books since we keep turning up to your events and telling friends that they must read your books. (As a random aside, I just got our new Microbiology instructor at work reading Feed, and she loves it so far.) That said, we'd be quite happy if we found ourselves having to spend even more of our budget on your books if it would mean gettng to read more stories you write.

This post really just makes me appreciate so much that I didn't grow up in poverty, and in spite of this money, books were the only thing I ever just wanted for no reason that my mother never refused me.

Thank you.

ETA: that said, all the books I own by you were bought and paid for even though I'm now 25 without a steady job and shouldn't be buying books compulsively. which I do. my mother created a monster.

Ha. Damn ebooks have often forced me to buy two copies of each thing. One for the kindle/phone and one "real" book because, well, I have all the others in the series and how will my kids find the next one if it's locked away in a kindle and not sitting there on a shelf waiting to be read.

I can't even imagine how I'd pirate a book but I'm lazy. I'll just buy. And I have the good fortune of being able to scrape that money together most of the time.

Plus. Authors. Rockstars. I bow down in your presence. I'd never steal from you cause how could I look you in the eye when I come to your signings.

I love books. I buy books. I do bat my eyes at my friends who work in bookstores to get better prices, but... I have been known to pay for a book I don't love, because I want the author to keep getting publishing contracts because I love their *other* series.
Movies and TV is harder because a lot of things I *would* pay for, just can't be purchased.

For the record, you are my Stephen King. I buy your books, and then I buy them again for friends - you deserve all the money they cost, and more! Go you! (HAIL!)

Thank you for posting this. I'm like ckd below - I'll often buy copies of free books to support the author (or as in your case, the Mira Grant story I got as part of the Hugo voter bundle spurred me to buy a bunch more of your work, so that one 'free' copy led to a lot in sales). And I own all the Diane Duane New Millennium Editions in ebook format, but the moment they go to print, my girlfriend and I are buying the whole set. I already have some Toby Daye paperbacks, but will probably buy the ebooks, too.

Also, how would you prefer we buy your books? I want to order a copy of Midnight Blue-Light special (after I read the first book in one sitting, how could I not?) and I like to support small bookstores (Borderlands Books was really nice with helping me inundate my CA relatives with science fiction for Christmas), but would you prefer that, or pre-ordering it from Amazon? I want to buy so that it maximizes money/benefit to you.

I was first introduced to your work by a friend who lent me a copy of Feed and said "You have to read this". I devoured it and Deadline and promptly went and pre-ordered Blackout. I then bought my own copies of Feed and Deadline. I also listen to a lot of audiobooks and bought Rosemary and Rue to listen to. This ended in me buying all the audio and print versions of the Toby series. Living in Australia where e-books are double the price despite the high Australian dollar when they are available drives me up the walls, but I manage to live with it.

Keep on writing and I'll keep on feeding your cats!

I do have pirated copies of your ebooks on my kobo. I also have legally downloaded copies of your novellas on there, and on my bookshelf I have paper copies of the Newsflesh Trilogy, Discount Armageddon, Rosemary and Rue, and Velveteen Vs. The Junior Super Patriots. (Also, the "Wicked Girls" CD. And theoretically a t-shirt some time in the future. And definitely a lot more books, because you're a magical book-writing android who produces amazing stories at a breakneck pace.) I like paper books, for sharing and holding and imbuing with nostalgia, but I like ebooks because I can fit 600 of them into my purse at a time. I like supporting authors. I don't like paying for the same book twice.

Every one of your ebooks on my kobo has a paper-book counterpart on my shelf, but that isn't true for every author whose books are in my ereader. And you know, sometimes, when I need to use my half-hour lunch to physically get out of my shitty retail job and be somewhere else that's quiet and calm and warm (because, you know, Canadian winter), I take my e-reader to Starbucks and page through an illegal book while I sip the chai-tea latte I bought as the rent on a chair. Because that's what I need, to calm my anxiety, to go back in there and face another five hours of retail.

I don't know if I really have an argument here, or a point. But sometimes I look at my bookshelves, at my small-but-growing DVD collection, at the CDs in their rack, at the various merchandise (mugs, figurines, t-shirts, decals) that I've bought or been gifted over the years, some part of the cost of which went back to the creators I want to support. And when I look at all that, it occurs to me how very little of it I would have purchased if I hadn't first had free (often illegal) access to the work of those creators; work that convinced me that these were the narratives, the music, the creations worth dolling out money for. Don't mistake me: I'm not poor. I never have to worry where my next meal is coming from, or whether I'll have a roof over my head. But I'm a recent university graduate, working retail, so I'm not exactly wealthy, either. There are so many wonderful creators in the world, and I can only afford to give money to so many of them.

And although I've poured a lot of my money into your creative works - and a lot of my time into trying to convince other people to do the same - you wouldn't probably never have seen a single cent from me if I hadn't become so enchanted with an illegally downloaded copy of "Wicked Girls."

I guess what I'm saying is, it's complicated. A lot more complicated than a lot of people want to think.

I don't pirate; not having any form of ereader tends to solve that temptation. But I do love me a sale; Humble Bundle, discount codes, thrift stores, $.50 at a library... Plus the obvious library card and borrowing from a friend!

But especially for the authors I really love and really want to support, I try to scrape the actual cost together out of my budget. Unfortunately, this is why I only have six of your books so far, to my shame and sadness. Fortunately, my boyfriend's learned that my birthday is for Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant books and Christmas is for preordering the new Game of Thrones season! That plus the occasional purchase I can manage would catch me up if you didn't publish so ridiculously quickly. :P

Among the many fascinating insights from this conversation is the knowledge that Velveteen vs. The Junior Super-Patriots is available for me to buy in e-version, something I for some reason thought was not the case. Yay!

I know I love ebooks, but I buy them, usually from Bain, because they make it super easy. Although iBooks also really handy. Your books we always get hard copy, and usually get multiple copies, and as it is we can't currently lend out the starters to any of your series, because they've all been lent out. We may have to fix this at your next release party. I think I know someone who'd love Verity.

At this point since space for the books is almost as much of an issue as cost (not that we're rolling in dough, especially not with a toddler in full time daycare, but because we've come to accept that a certain amount will be spent on books and budget around it just like we budget around daycare and mortgage) we tend to buy hard copies more often to support the author, or because we want to be able to lend them than anything else.

Meant to ask. Is it okay to share this?

If I were to want to buy your book in paperback, is there a difference in royalties you get based on where I buy them? How about ebook? Audiobook? What should I do to get the most money to you, as a percentage of what I spend?